


nothing is final

by Idris



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 23:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1960548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idris/pseuds/Idris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tharkay and silence as an expression of the self.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing is final

Some days Tharkay thinks that years will go by and mountains crumble and the sun dry up the sky before he finds someone who understands any of it.

He keeps himself busy and says that he is content with it, and indeed it is not that he is unhappy. Therefore, it is all the more frustrating when none of it’s quite enough. He cannot even put words to the lack. All he knows is that the lines don’t quite match up. He is an incomplete circle, the space in him like a hollow.

Tharkay is a master in making do, and so he continues. There is always more world to see, and he walks on, chasing one horizon after the next, telling himself that at least a little of the hollow deep inside of him is slowly being filled.

It feels as though the empty places of the world are all he has, expanding until they soak up his thoughts. When he crosses the desert, he feels so small. It’s a good feeling. These feelings, these small losses, none of it is infinite, none of it is final. Under the sky, everything he is becomes a part of a greater whole.

Tharkay dislikes travelling companions. They fill up the silence until there is no space for him, chasing away his thoughts with their words, and he cannot breathe. Physical walls are no hindrance for Tharkay. More often, they are a shelter. Walls built of people and their words and needs are a cage he cannot abide.

In his world, people come and they go, and he never reaches out to keep them in place. Not even Sara is inclined to stop and wait. The colour of his skin may not be the problem, for once in his life, but somehow she manages to find something else between them. Another man might hate her for it. Tharkay is numbly relieved.

He cannot bear the thought that he might bring her close and make a family, draw them all around him, for he knows that one day he would suddenly no longer be able to breathe.  The silence would be swallowed up until he couldn’t hear his own thoughts.

For a man like Tharkay, some things are worth so much more than love.

The circle is unclosed, the lines uneven, the sky just a little too wide, but it is all Tharkay has until the day that he meets William Laurence. It's not quite a completion, because nothing ever really is, but now the emptiness is not a loss but a possibility. 

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, Tharkay, you and your mysterious introvert ways. I feel a kindred spirit.
> 
> My actual summer holiday plans:
> 
> Co-worker: so... you're going to spend a week in the mountains alone? 
> 
> Me: yes, and it will be GLORIOUS
> 
> If the fic suddenly stops, I may or may not have been eaten by bears.


End file.
